WHAT: A suddenly young Ronan wakes up to an old Gansey in his family kitchen. WHERE: The Barns, Kitchen WHEN: April 17th, 2am! WARNINGS: Swearing, some blank threats, feels. STATUS:Complete!
Usually when Ronan dreamt about the Barns lately, it was all muted greys and the stricken face of his mother and his father’s body in the driveway. It wasn’t waking up in his bed, warm and rested. It wasn’t noticing knickknacks he’d never seen on the nightstand or spotting a stranger’s clothes hanging in the closet. Nothing terrifying crawled through that crack in the closet door either and nothing chased him down the stairs, but Ronan hurried down them anyway.
“Mom?” He wasn’t sure why he was whispering. But being in the Barns was the cause of both joy and horror, longing and relief. His heart hammered behind his ribcage and he ducked into the kitchen, halfway sure he’d need to bolt out the back door when a nightmare creature showed up.
What he didn’t expect was a lurking shadow at the kitchen table, too male to be his mother and too solid through the shoulders to be Declan. Knowing exactly where the butcher block was, Ronan darted in through the dark kitchen and grabbed a knife.
“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my house? Come to finish the rest of us off?” he growled.
Gansey should’ve known better than to be old, still unfamiliar to most of the house, and rifling around the kitchen in the middle of the night. But he couldn’t help it, he’d grown tired of sleeping alone at Monmouth the first night, and now things were chaotic enough that he wanted to stay around the Barns just to make sure nothing else went sideways while he wasn’t around. But that also brought back an incredible amount of insomnia, and with that came a craving for yogurt.
So there he sat, quiet in the dark at the kitchen table, shirtless from sleep and eating a jar of homemade yogurt with blueberries mixed in - Ronan made, just how he liked it.
The voice was one he knew, though young sounding, and it took a moment for the words to register. Gansey froze in place, spoon sticking out of his mouth. He didn’t have to turn to see a very young Ronan brandishing a knife at him. “Oh- Just… the yogurt supply?” He asked lamely, torn between not wanting to escalate the situation further and just jumping in to give his best friend a desperately needed hug. “Ronan-- It’s-” He faltered, and ran a hand over the stubble on his face that took far too long to grow in. “It’s Gansey.”
Ronan scowled. He kept the knife out in one hand and leaned over to flick the kitchen light on. Blinking against the harsh introduction of light, he squinted at the man at his kitchen table. The man’s back was facing him. Gansey - his Gansey - had good shoulders, rowing shoulders, but this was a grown man. With a visible tattoo.
His mind temporarily shied away from recognizing the art style was his own.
“Right. You’re Gansey,” he sneered. He wanted very much to keep swimming in denial and assume this was just a strange dream. But he knew the difference. Even if he couldn’t control a dream, he knew when he was having one. The counter felt real as he traced a hand along it.
He frowned and circled around to face the intruder. “Gansey’s fifteen, dipshit.”
Fifteen. Oh boy. Ronan had been nineteen just hours before, when Gansey had last saw him, and they were all still adjusting to the age change. So it was going to be like that, eh Vallo? Gansey set his yogurt down and gave into the annoyance and frustration of the last few days, and blew out a sigh. He rubbed his hands over his face before dropping them down to the table surface so Ronan could see he wasn’t a threat. Hopefully.
He stared at his friend, eyes stopping on the shaved head, across the young face and over his tense shoulders. He remembered this Ronan so clearly, back in the days where Niall Lynch had just been killed and the pair were just Ronan and Gansey, renovating Monmouth and talking of Welsh Kings. He missed a great deal about those days sometimes, but not the sorrow or pain Ronan was going through in that time.
And he couldn’t risk saying something that would just drive the boy further away, so he simply flipped up his hands to open palms. “Ask me anything.”
Ronan rubbed at his arm, suddenly very much hating being in this house. He’d been longing for it for weeks, laying in bed at Monmouth and fighting the tears. Fighting sleep. Now he was here and the look in this guy’s eyes was too knowing. Too fucking pitying. Ronan felt anger and grief war inside his head, giving him a headache and a wet shine in his eyes.
“Where’s my mom? Where are my brothers?” Those weren’t questions his Gansey would know the answer to, beyond “at the barns”, and he felt like he somehow knew the answer anyway. He dropped his arm and threw his hands out in a frustrated gesture, growling wordlessly. “Fuck I don’t know. Tell me something only Gansey would know.”
Gansey knew it wasn’t dim enough in the kitchen to get away with a wince, so he tried to stay as calm as he could with Ronan’s questions being thrown at him. He knew Ronan hated pity or sympathy in his direction, and the two had perfected exactly how to deal with one another. It wasn’t quite the same at this age, however.
“Matthew’s upstairs asleep - or should be.” Hopefully without his own change, though he wasn’t sure if Matthew suddenly being the older sibling would be worse or better for Ronan. At least Matthew was one that it was hard to dispute exactly who it was. “Declan and your mother aren’t here, right now.” He’d almost said yet, but he wasn’t up to fully lying to Ronan. “It’s-- complicated, but this world is pretty far from anything normal. As you can likely tell.”
There was a pit of dread bubbling in Ronan’s stomach. None of those answers felt surprising, even though they should be. His mother should be here. Declan could be off at school, but his mother should be here. And this world, he’d said. Like it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
“I can’t tell shit but the fact that there’s weird shit in our house that shouldn’t be here.” He reached across the table and picked up the yogurt container, brought it over to his nose to give a suspicious sniff. “You’re sitting in our kitchen in the dark, calling yourself Gansey, and saying “this world” like we’re on a different planet. And you still haven’t told me something only Gansey would know. “ He dropped the container back onto the kitchen and readjusted his grip on the knife. “What the actual fuck, man.”
“I didn’t want to wake anyone, and I have my own problems sleeping.” Gansey probably sounded defensive now, which was unhelpful to the fifteen year old sniffing his yogurt, but he scowled anyway. “I’m out of time myself, normally a Gansey much closer in age to you would be here instead.”
Oh, right, his question of something only Gansey would know, which had left him scrambling to remember something from Ronan’s time. Something that wasn’t about Dreams, and pre-dated Adam. The more difficult memories.
He finally blew out a breath and then gave a little, almost-hysterical laugh. “Uhhh- I know you sometimes sneak read trashy romance novels when you think no one is around or knows about it.” Gansey scrambled around a little, wondering if that was enough, and eventually just shrugged and continued, “and I know you’re the only one that remembered my 15th birthday on the day of.” Helen’s apologetic-day-after was appreciated, at least, but he’d never forget Ronan dragging him out of his hole that day, for historical adventuring and pizza.
The knife lowered before Ronan even realized he was moving it. His grip loosened and he frowned so hard it gave him a quick little headache between his eyebrows. He’d never told anyone about the books or Gansey’s birthday bullshit. He rarely talked to anyone but Matthew and Gansey at all. And he doubted Gansey would’ve shared anything damning about his parents with anyone.
“What the fuck,” he said flatly. He didn’t put the knife away but he did set it down on the counter and kick the cabinet below. “What the fuck.” Did he do this? Had he dreamt an adult Gansey? He turned to squint at Gansey for a long moment and then sighed. “I can’t tell if you--if this not feeling like a dream is good or fucking awful. How are you so relaxed about this shit?”
Gansey, now sure that Ronan wasn’t going to stab him - he didn’t think he would anyway, but one could never be sure with a high-stressed Ronan - rubbed a hand over his face. He didn’t know how to explain just enough to help Ronan, but not enough to break the space-time continuum. He knew there was no way they’d all keep their mouths shut about a lot of things, but potential days of this … well.
“This place is called Vallo - I’ve… been through a lot of things like this before, here.” Oh, God. He knew Adam was sleeping nearby, just in the other room on the sofa, and desperately wished he would wake up and help him, while not wanting to throw Ronan for more of a loop. “It’s-- it’s a lot of nerd-talk, in all honesty. Alternate-universes, time travel, multiverse theory… You’ll hate it.”
Gansey grinned wolfishly, knowing he had a trump up his sleeve for making Ronan groan a little. “I have spreadsheets and a great deal of documentation for it.”
“Ugh,” Ronan’s expression instantly curdled, but in the way that was reserved for Gansey. The way that was as much fond exasperation as it was shithead annoyance. “Pass. There better be a cheatsheet that doesn’t mean I have to read a hundred pages you scrawled in a journal.”
Rolling his eyes, he turned to examine the kitchen. It was still the kitchen he remembered, only there were new towels on the oven and a few different appliances and a general sense that things had changed. He’d never felt out of place in his house until this moment.
He frowned and rubbed a hand over his face. “What the fuck do I do, Gansey?”
“You’re in luck, I’ll spare you from my journal.” He would have to, since it was written so far in the future that it would just confuse or annoy Ronan even more. But he couldn’t let his best friend get away with it entirely, and smiled in a much more genuine way. “For now.” Ronan had put up with a lot of his talk over the years, a lot of his magical theories and a lot of his nerding-out over Glendower. At that age, even, when he’d been so passionate about it.
His expression turned more sympathetic as he looked across at young Ronan, and his smile turned down a little. “We just… wait it out, unfortunately. In the meantime, I can introduce you to a few new friends when they wake up. Matthew will probably be happy to show you all of the animals that are here-- Oh! My car.” Gansey remembered getting the Pig at sixteen, as a fond memory. “You’ll love my car, trust me.”
Ronan Lynch was not good at waiting things out at any age, but he was especially not good at it at fifteen. He sneered. Jealousy flared in his gut even with Gansey looking more like Richard Gansey the second than the third. He reached out and tipped the yogurt jar slowly over towards Gansey, splattering some of the remaining contents in his direction.
“I don’t want to meet your new friends, old man.” That said, he did tip his head and look a little more interested in the thought of a car. A car was always a good distraction when Ronan didn’t want to face his problems head on. “We’ll see about the car. If it turns out it’s a volvo, I might have to kick your ass.” Gansey easily outweighed him by fifty pounds or more now, but Ronan didn’t even flinch in his threat. “Come on, get up,” he demanded. “Take me to this mystery car that I’ll supposedly love.”
Gansey made a little noise between annoyance and amusement. He’d seen the jealousy before, just as often on Ronan’s face as his own. Adam was such a staple part of that, but the feeling was so far behind them for current Gansey that it was a sudden reminder. That, and annoyance over his spilled yogurt. “Unnecessary, Lynch.” He used a napkin to clean up the mess immediately, admonishing Ronan as if he were a cat.
“As if I would drive a volvo.” Gansey snorted, shaking his head. He left the volvo to Declan, and knew that he was about to give Ronan a thrill. It wasn’t as if it was the first, or even hundredth time they had gone out joyriding in all hours of the pre-dawn day. He pushed himself back from the table and gave Ronan a look. The kind of Dadsey look that he had mastered at fifteen. “I’ll get dressed and be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere.”
Ronan was only just remembering that Gansey said they were somewhere called Vallo and not Singer’s Falls. What a mindfuck. He glanced towards the windows, but they were covered by his mother’s curtains. He rolled his eyes and thrust out his arms angrily instead.
“It’s 2 a.m. and I’m apparently in goddamn Oz. Where the fuck am I gonna go?”